


Terrible Thing

by saltyplaydough



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Blood and Violence, M/M, Supernatural Elements, a girl walks home alone at night AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:27:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23989609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltyplaydough/pseuds/saltyplaydough
Summary: Look at him,they think.All on his own, in the wrong end of town, with the monsters out for the night.
Relationships: Aaron Dingle/Robert Sugden
Comments: 14
Kudos: 28





	Terrible Thing

He knows he unsettles them. Even before he goes in for the kill: before his teeth grow out and his eyes cloud over, lid to lid, into black. They take in the unlikeliness of a lad like him—with his clean-shaven boyish face, scuffed shoes perched on a beat-up board, and the way he looks smaller than he is, edges of his black hoodie blurring out into the dark of the night—approaching men like _them_ with no sign of fear or respect in the inky chill of his stare, and something in them trips. But how much of a mug would they have to be, to be scared of a _boy_?

 _Look at him,_ they think. _All on his own, in the wrong end of town, with the monsters out for the night._

They’re used to fear, aren’t they? In the way their wives stiffen when an arm swings too close and their children tiptoe around them, voices hardly ever heard when daddy’s home. Fear and power. That’s all they respond to. That’s all they know. But they don’t always recognise it. They don’t see the power coiled around him, and they don’t trust in the shiver running through their own bodies in response.

Aaron never misses it. He knows fear crosses their hearts the second they catch his pale face watching them in the night. Sees it in the way their breaths stutter, barely, and their pupils dilate. An age-old instinct, a whisper down the back of their necks telling them to _run_.

But they never _listen_. ‘Course not. Big man knows best, after all.

He lets them struggle, slippery with blood and sweat and panic. He likes when they catch him at just the right angle, when his own lip snags over his tooth and his own blood gets mixed into the fight. It’s the closest he gets to feeling something, these days.

He likes the way it gets their blood pumping as well. Hot and salty when it hits his tongue.

“You won’t be doin’ that again. Will ya?” he says to the man in front of him. Aaron’s teeth have come out in anticipation, bending his ‘w’s and ‘b’s, but it’s his black eyes that the man can’t seem to look away from. It’d been a fun little scrap while it had lasted. Now Aaron’s got him backed against this brick wall just ‘round the corner from a busted up street light, with a pointer finger idly flicking a gold chain where it stops below the man’s neck.

Aaron stares at the blood pooling dark in the dip between bruised nose and lip. He raises a thumb up to smudge it across skin. Feels nice. Slick. He can almost taste it.

The man shakes. “No, no, please. I won’t, I–”

“I know, mate,” Aaron shushes him, almost a whisper, his palm cupping a cold, wet cheek. “You won’t,” he tells him. Then he closes his jaw around the man’s throat and bites.

:::

It’s not as messy as you’d think. Or it doesn’t have to be.

The first couple of times were a blood bath; He’d been soaked to his skin, the whites of his eyes glaring in the mess of red and black that’d been left of him. But he’s learned since then. Control, amongst other things. And how to close his lips tight around the opening and suck until the rush of liquid ebbed into a slow leak, and then into nothing.

Aaron staggers back away from the body, warmth surging through him and leaving him dizzy. It thuds to the ground now that he isn’t holding it up anymore, still upright, with a leg bent weird under the rest of its weight and blank eyes staring at the other brick wall across from them.

Aaron considers the gash on its throat. There’s a bruise forming around it already.

In a few hours, the early risers will trickle down from their flats on their way to their jobs. One or two of them will spot the body, but the dark of the early morning will let them believe it’s another poor sod sleeping off the booze from the night before. Nothing unusual. Nothing worth the bother.

A little after that, once the sky turns grey and more light creeps into the alleyway, a curious sort will notice the odd slump of limbs, take a few wary steps closer to the body and see the face attached to it, the open, unseeing eyes.

They know this face around these parts. They know who it works— _worked_ —for, and know well, the fearful resentment that came along with the flash of a silver Audi S8 turning onto their street, this same face unmistakeable through an open window.

They know it’s best not to get involved.

It’ll be hours before the coppers will stop by, sun all the way out by then, to take a few pictures, a few cursory statements from nervous residents peeking over uniformed shoulders at the body being bagged and taken away, and to be watched through the gaps between curtains until they leave in their police cars.

Aaron squats in front of the body. He moves the head a little to the side, enough to find the clasp of the gold chain and remove it from around the neck. He hops back up, and watches it swing, one end of it wrapped around his pointer finger. There’s really not a lot of light in the alley, but the chain manages to glitter.

He shoves it in the front pocket of his jeans. Wipes his mouth with the cuff of his hoodie, grabs his board where he’d left it leaning against the wall, and turns to leave on it.

The body will be laid out in a morgue locker two towns over, this time tomorrow. Aaron doesn’t know what they’ll make of this one, or how they’ve tried to explain the ones that have come before it. Will they scratch their heads over the bruising around the wound?

He’s not even got a clue what they’ve been seeing when they look at the traces of himself left behind. What do they say about him? About what he is?

He does know that the police won’t come back for a follow-up after that. Not until another body is found and they have to repeat the drill again, taking all of the same photos and asking the same questions. Aaron thinks they’ve decided a local street gang’s found a sick new way to take care of gang elders grown too big for their shoes or competing operations fixing to steal profits. Nothing unusual. Nothing worth the bother.

Aaron pulls his hood low over his eyes and stuffs his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. The fabric inside feels worn thin and rough, but it’s still nice, the way it rubs up against the back of his knuckles.

He goes out onto the main road. Past two small streets, and turns into the third. It’s where he’d found the man. Where he’d lured him from, two streets up and into that alley.

(Aaron supposes that’s a thing he can do as well. Get them to follow. It’s not anything they can’t fight if they want to,—and they do, eventually, when things start getting a bit too weird—but for a while, while they still think of it as their own idea, he looks straight into their eyes and they follow.)

He doesn’t need to be back here. This isn’t anywhere near where he lives, and the woman from before is long gone by now.

( _“Eh?” The woman moves to stand between the man and the driver’s side of a red car, stopping him from getting back in. “I said twenty quid! If you think you’re goin’ anywhere without payin’ for the service, you can–”_

_The man scoffs. “I’m not payin’ nout, sweetheart,” he snarls. “Maybe if you did more with that gob a’yours instead of–.”_

_“Not my fault you can’t get it up,_ sweethear _–”_

_Slap._

_“You wanna say that again, you cunt?” He grabs her by her jaw and slams her back into the side of the car. With his free hand, he takes firm hold of the hands punching and scratching at him, fingers pushing hard into her skin._

_Fear spikes in the woman, and turns into panicked rage. “Let go of me, you fuckin’–”_

_The man sees something shift, just out the corner of his vision. Something in him stills._

_A moment of distraction is all the woman needs to stomp a heel hard into his foot, push the already crumbling man onto his arse, and run._

_“You’re dead!” The man screams after her, half enraged and half in pain. He looks wildly to his left to find whatever it was that threw him off, humiliated and ready to ruin something._

_He finds nothing._

_Still on his arse, he kicks at the door. Screams some more._

_He pulls himself off the ground. The man’s patting his pockets for the keys when he looks over the shiny red roof of the car._

_Across from him, barely within the glow off of a street light, a boy looks back._ )

Aaron sees it, and steps off the board, foot dragging over tar an inch or so, to stop himself.

It’s gorgeous.

A little dusty, the way cars are meant to be. It’s definitely not the man’s silver Audi. And Aaron can tell it’s well looked after as well, so he knows it’s not the man’s at all. Not with the way he’d kicked and slammed at it.

Aaron kicks up his board and takes slow steps towards it.

A Jaguar Series 3. Red. Flashy—much too flashy to be left out alone in this neighbourhood—but Aaron likes flashy sometimes.

He’s never seen anything like it in person. It looks a lot like the one in a photo he’d torn out of a car mag left behind at the bus stop once. He’s still got it, in the back of his bedside drawer, along with torn out photos of a bunch of other cars from that same mag.

“–don’t care if he was promising to break _both_ your arms. It’s not yours to give up as collateral for your stupid decisions, Andy,” a voice whisper-shouts from the sidewalk next to the car.

Aaron stops in his tracks. Now that he’s realised he’s not alone, he also notices the top of a blonde head peeking out across the roof. Shiny.

The blonde head peeks out further to reveal the side of a massively pissed off face. “No, _shut up_ ,” the voice gets louder. “That’s _your_ problem. I’m taking it back, and– _aahshhitfuck–_ ”

Aaron’s been spotted.

The head rises, leading into broad shoulders and a palm clutched against a heaving chest. “ _What_?” a furious glare shouts from under carefully coiffed hair—bright even in this light.

Aaron stops himself taking a step back. He wonders if he’s still got blood on his face. He wasn't expecting to run into anyone else today.

Faking a cough, he uses the chance to cover his mouth with his sleeve and wipe. Just in case. Though Blondie would be doing more than angrily demanding an explanation if he’d looked up to find a stranger staring back with blood around his mouth.

The voice still on the other end of the call carries on yelling before it’s stopped with an impatient jab at a screen.

Blondie’s eyes flick back quick, making sure Aaron hasn’t done anything in the split second he’d looked away, in time to find _Aaron’s_ eyes caught on the long metal rod sticking out the top corner of the driver’s side door.

He bristles.

Aaron looks back at him.

“It’s my car,” he exclaims, already frowning at Aaron like he’d said any different.

Aaron shifts his grip on his board. Swallows.

Blondie squints at him, suspicious, and then tense. “You’re not… you don’t know a Mickey, do you?”

Mickey. Must be what the man in the alley was called. Aaron shakes his head.

Blondie looks unsure for a few beats, but seeing Aaron continue to stand around awkwardly silent instead of threatening to start chopping off arms seems to do the trick in clearing his doubts. Then he just looks puzzled.

Aaron’s aware that he hasn’t stopped staring. He jerks his gaze to the car between them instead.

It really is beautiful and he’s a little sad he won’t be able to take it for a spin now.

He’s almost shifting to turn and go, leave Blondie to it, when he hears, “Well if you’re going to keep gawking, you can at least help.”

Aaron starts, throwing him a dirty look. For someone trying to be sneaky, he’s very loud _._

It’s enough to get Blondie looking a little sheepish. “It’s just… I can’t get it to slide the lock up. And I don’t know how long I’ve got before...,” he shrugs.

Aaron thinks back to the droop of _Mickey’s_ head against a piss drenched wall. He’s not coming back anytime soon. Blondie will be fine on his own.

But he also thinks about getting to feel cool arches of a bonnet under his fingers, and about standing shoulder to shoulder as they peer into the dark interior of the car together.

Aaron steps around the front of the car. His legs a little shaky from standing so stiff this whole time.

Blondie stands a little straighter.

Aaron’s coming around to the driver’s side, when he steps on something, the hard jut of it scraping against tar and sticking uncomfortably into the worn sole of his shoe.

He steps back.

They both look down at a brown leather tag and the key attached to it.

“Oh,” Blondie says, voice flat in his shock.

It must’ve fallen out of Mickey’s pocket, with the way he’d been rolling on the ground, screaming.

Aaron peeks a look at Blondie. He can see blood rush into his cheeks, darkening his freckles. He breathes out through his nose and takes another step back.

When wide eyes snap up in question at the movement, he looks away, jaw clenched, and jerks a thumb over his shoulder.

He’s still waiting for the roll of an engine starting, by the time he's curving a corner at the end of the street.

It doesn't come. He doesn't look back.

He wasn’t supposed to be back here anyway. Stupid car.

:::

He doesn’t immediately see it when he sifts through the torn out magazine pages recovered from the back of the bedside drawer, and he almost feels a moment of loss, until a flash of red’s got his fingers freezing in place. The red’s a little brighter on this one, and it’s from an earlier year. It looks more like a toy compared to the one he’d seen today. All buffed and gleaming and lifeless.

Still, Aaron sets the photo down on top of the stack and tries in vain to smooth out a curled corner, before giving up and thrusting it all back inside the drawer.

He pulls the gold chain out of his pocket, and drops it onto the top of the drawer, down amongst a growing pile of other stuff that’d caught his eye.

He's got enough. He doesn’t need anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> My first chaptered fic cannot believe it's actually happening 😭
> 
> Let me know what you think! You can also find me on tumblr at [spamela-hamderson](https://spamela-hamderson.tumblr.com/)


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